Signposts

I have this constant battle going on in my mind.  I fight it all the time. Fear likes to ride me like a prize pony. That makes me angry. When I'm angry I rebel. Hard. I have been angry with fear for a long time.
Now, when fear comes calling I invite it in for a chat. I interrogate it. Why? Because fear is FULL of useful information. Fear is like a big, vegas bright, neon sign. It's an arrow at the crossroads saying "Go This Way!"
I've been afraid before and I know how paralyzing it can be. But when you're so scared of making a mistake that you make nothing at all then that is a problem.
When God said be fruitful and replenish the earth I don't think he was just talking about making babies. I believe the God of creation was talking about CREATING! I think he was talking about taking whatever gift you have and planting it, wherever the soil is most fertile. Whether you're a scientist working to unravel the mysteries of the universe, or a teacher striving to mold young minds. Or even if you're a regular everyday person faced with deciding how to reveal your feelings to your crush. You just can't let fear take you over. Living in fear is not living at all, because you die every time you back down. Every. Single. Time.
So, if you're scared, follow that signpost. Life is too short to wonder what's at the end of the road. Travel it and find out!

Is It Me???

AAAAAAAAARRRRRGGHHHH!!!!!!!!

Why does this keep happening to me?  Hollywood is inside my head.  They've micro-chipped me and are listening to my ideas....and I'm not getting PAID!!!!

I have a problem with this!  OK, a bit of background information is in order.

I was in the ninth grade when America went to war.  I found out about Operation Desert Storm in my English class.  Ms. Kimble, my English teacher, made the announcement halfway through class.  It took a moment for the information to settle in.  For a while all you could hear was the ticking of her clock.  This was the perhaps the loudest clock in the history of timepieces!  I would always tell my friends that it sounded like a time bomb waiting to explode.  It was the cause of much anxiety during test time.  After hearing the news of military upheaval, every tick was like a doom bell ringing.  Adding to this anxiety was the fact that my father was in Guam on business.  His return home was delayed because of the kick-off of the Gulf War.

To sum up: the country is at war, daddy isn't coming home, and there's a clock that sounds like a bomb in my English class.  How do I cope?  Well, OBVIOUSLY, I write a story about terrorists taking over our school and the student body having to fight free!  DUH!!!

So, I'm feeling pretty good about how my story is turning out.  Then, in 1991 two things happen: The Gulf war ends and the movie Toy Soldiers comes out.  The only reason I even remember this movie is because of its premise.  Can you guess what the premise was?  That's right.  Terrorists attack a school and students fight their way to freedom.

Sigh.

I took it all in stride and joked about Hollywood stealing my idea but, of course, I was outraged.  How could this have happened?  It is impossible that anyone can have the same idea!  (Yes, I'm laughing at myself.)  However, this did give me hope that I may have the right mind to one day tell stories on a grand scale!

A pattern began to form with me.  I would watch movies and just KNOW what was going to happen. I choose to believe this is because I am something of a "savant" when it comes to movies and NOT because the movies were predictable! I will not be dissuaded of this notion and I'll thank you to allow me to continue on in my delusions.  This isn't just with movies, though.

If you know the Harry Potter story, then you'll understand what I'm about to tell you.  And if you don't know the Harry Potter story, SPOILER ALERT and remind me to rethink our relationship because I'm not sure why we're friends.

Here is a list of things I knew would happen before they happened because this is the way I would have written it (in no particular order):
1.  Severus Snape was in love with Lily.
2.  Severus Snape was a hero.
3.  Dumbledore planned his own death.
4.  Harry was a horcrux....THEREFORE
5.  Harry Potter Had. To. Die.  (Although, I would have left him dead, I still loved the way it ended.)

I called each of these things and they ALL happened.  It is as if the world bends to my will!  If only I could get PAID FOR IT!

Alas, it is happening all over again.

Allow me the arrogance to think that you have been reading my blog and remember my short story "Boy Meets...?"  If you haven't you should give it a read.  It's short, I'll wait here..................................

Great, so now you've read it.  A neat little idea, right?  By no means original, (Pygmalion anyone?) but still a neat little nugget of an idea that has great potential.

Enter Ruby Sparks: A Movie.  This is the preview:

AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Am I doomed to repeat this pattern?  Am I tuned to some specific movie-makers frequency?  Is there no end to this theft and humiliation? And, perhaps most importantly, HOW can a sister get paid!?!!!???  As GOD IS MY WITNESS I will get credit for my ideas!!  I SWEAR I will beat Hollywood to the punch ONE DAY!

Zombies!

I'm resurrecting some things
Once dead things
Turning them, making them living
Living things
Inside my head
Want out
So they bang
And they beat on the walls
Make the floors shake
Make my head ache
Beg me to reincarnate them
From the gray matter grave
They're rotting in.
Let the apocalypse begin.

Writing Challenge for Speculative Faith!

This was incredibly fun!  I don't usually do writing challenges (probably some perverse fear that I'll need prayer and therapy for in the future!) but I couldn't resist this one.

I came across it on www.speculativefaith.com, a website dedicated specifically to Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy.  They gave the first sentence and you had 100 - 200 words to come up with a short story.  There were some really intriguing submissions!  Below is mine. Enjoy!

No matter how Amos tilted his head or scrunched his eyes, he couldn’t see past the growing shadow that obscured the distant mountains and the road that led to them.

“You’re going to ride into that?”

“Directly.”  Valentin leaned forward in his saddle, almost reaching for the gloom.

“Are you mad,” Amos asked.

“A little, yes.  But that’s beside the point.”  Amos shook his head.

“Why in the name of Ori are we doing this?”

“I’m the Beacon, Amos.  Stepping into the scary dark place is my job.  No one needs a torch in the daylight.  Although…,” he paused.  “I can’t for the life of me figure out why you’re going in there.”  His eyes twinkled and the corners of his mouth quirked.

“Right. Like I’m going to let you come back with all the heroic tales. No sir, not after the last time!”

“Is it my fault that you hid in a tree the whole time?”

“There were snakes! EVERYWHERE!”

“Well come on then!”  Valentin spurred his horse forward.  “Do try to keep up,” he called over his shoulder.

“Sometimes I really hate you,” Amos yelled and urged his horse to catch up to Valentin.  So this was his life now, riding with the Beacon into darkness again and again.  Still, it could be worse. There could be darkness AND snakes.  “Please, Ori. Let it just be darkness this time?”

Hide and Seek

I found myself
Between the lines of your song
Never met me
But knew the truth of me
All along
And told it in each word of your song
I am an honest mistake
A malicious blessing
The truth wearing a lie
Trying to hide
I learned that from you
You sang me
Just like one of your tunes
I wasn't real
Until the music you made
Made me.

Untitled.

I don't really have anyone to talk to. That makes for a lonely existence.

Boy Meets....?

"A Short Story." ~This is what I hope to achieve with all stories I tell.

Tom was writing the “Great American Novel”.  He hunched over the well-worn journal, sitting in an empty park as the morning sun warmed the page on which he wrote.  His hero had, so far, come of age and was about to meet the Girl.  His one true love would be the girl next door, of course.  She would be the girl who helped him up after the playground bully pushed him off the swing in elementary school.  The girl who always smiled and waved in high school, even though he was a hopeless, awkward, bespectacled goof.  She was the girl who would meet him by purest chance after he became a confident young man, and she would admit to always having liked him, but never being brave enough to speak up.  Yes.  He was well on his way to capturing the hearts of his readers.  He was certain of it, and quite lost in that thought when he heard a laugh.

She had a laugh that was like the laugh of many children.  You could almost hear gleeful 5 year olds giggling without control.  He loved her laugh.  He had never heard her or met her before.  But he loved her laugh.  She seemed so familiar to him. Everything about her evoked a memory he held dear and treasured inside him.  Her hand was like the bedroom in the house where he grew up.  Like the lake where his father took he and his brother fishing.

The curve of her neck, so like the sun-dappled path through the woods behind his house.  The path where he would ride his bike to his secret hiding place among the trees.  Her hair was very like the dark that descended when he had seen his first movie and sat quivering with excitement at the wonders on the screen.  Her eyes gave him the comfort and jolt of his first morning cup of coffee.  The one drug he could never learn to do without.

She had simply appeared in front of him.  One moment he was madly scribbling the latest addition to his story, lost in his created world.  The next he was looking up at her and feeling the most acute sense of déjà vu he had ever experienced.  He was gob smacked.  His lips moved, but no words came.  She laughed again.  This time it was more mature.  It was more like ocean waves washing up onto the shore and over his feet as he walked towards the setting sun.

He should know her, he thought, as she sat down, leaving only a whisper of space between them.  He breathed in the scent of her and was reminded of summer days in the backyard spent sipping honeysuckles the way Clara had shown him.  Clever Clara, who always knew the best way to waste a day.

“Hello,” she said.  He heard birdsong when she spoke.

“Hello,” he managed to say through the nostalgic haze he was in.  He tried desperately to pin her face to a specific place in his memory, tried and failed.  “I’m Tom.”  He held out his hand.  She looked down at it the same small smile on her face.

For a while she just looked at the offered hand, then took it and turned it over.  She examined his palm, pressing her fingertips to the little ink stains that always seemed to find their way onto his hand when writing.  When she touched him a strange feeling crept over him.  It began as wonder, and as the contact continued, became anticipation; a sort of maddening tension.  Just before she let go the feeling stole around his heart with soft gentle arms and squeezed.  He gave a slight gasp.  When she let go the feeling lessened but did not disappear.

“Who are you?” he blurted.  He was befuddled by her, even more by his reaction to her.  Not attraction, really, but definitely connection.

“I don’t have a title yet,” she said.  Tom didn’t understand what she meant.  But right now he didn’t understand anything.  She was like no one and nothing he had ever experienced.  And yet she was altogether comfortable and familiar to him.  Where had they met?  How had they interacted?  That he couldn’t remember was driving him crazy.  Yet, she seemed wholly content to sit with him in silence.

“Where did you come from?”  The question was rhetorical of course, more for him than anything else.  But as she gazed at him with dark eyes, now seemingly filled with a galaxy of stars, he knew she would answer him.

“You,” she said simply, and tapped the journal in his lap.  She looked around, surveying the park.  “What should we do next?”

Tom looked at the book in his lap.  As he tried to make sense of what she said his eyes fell on the last sentence he had written.

It said: “What should we do next?”

Arrival

I've done it. I've gotten to that point in my life where I finally speak up. Without humor, without apology, I will open my mouth and say I will not be treated this way.

I will not be abused and dismissed. I will not let you use me up. I've reached the point where I dig in my heels and say I will not move another inch. I give no more ground to the likes of you. I give you no more peace, no more peace of mind. I give you no more. Never again.

I have arrived.

Motherhood and The Terminator

Sometimes motherhood hurts. I don't usually open up about this, but sometimes it just... it sucks. I joke about it all the time, but like most comedy, my jokes are born from pain. Make no mistake, I love my child fiercely and would kill anyone who threatened her without pity or remose.
However, raising a child is by far the hardest job in the world. It is even more difficult when you know your child is destined for greatness.

I'm not talking about the mundane vanities every parent has regarding their child. I get that. Every parent has that right, but what I'm talking about goes deeper than that. There is a greatness of purpose that just hovers over some children. A burden of purpose that means your child doesn't belong to you but to the world at large.

The burden of that responsibility can wear a person down after a while. The parent must always be on guard and watchful that the purpose is not polluted.  The parents job becomes twofold.  You must, not only raise your child, but now you must groom them as well.

You have to become Sarah Connor.

Yeah, I pretty much relate most of my life's learning to something I've seen in a movie. I'm a geek like that. But bear with me. I have a point.

Sarah knew from the very beginning what her son's purpose was. She knew what he was meant to do: Be a leader, save the world. She knew and acted accordingly.

She is the embodiment of "train up a child". She prepared him for the coming war. So much so, that she was deemed crazy and institutionalized because of it. I feel myself going down this same crazed path!

Don't worry, I'm not teaching her how to build sniper rifles...yet.

Yet, I do feel this weight of purpose. I believe in her greatness so much so that it seems to become a barrier between she and I.  She doesn't believe like I believe. And you know what? It's okay. Because I believe enough for the both of us.

It is very hard and it is often painful. I've never heard a parent say this but I'm going to be truthful here: sometimes your kids can really hurt you.

My daughter is going through a phase of questioning and contradicting every single word that comes out of my mouth. I don't know why or when it will end, but there it is. My ten year old does not trust that I have the intelligence that God gave a gnat. Which is kind of hurtful because I've always prided myself on my acquisition of useful information.

Yes. I can already hear most of you saying that this is a phase all children go through. Yet, I have never seen any child take to it with as much...DETERMINATION.

I am trying my best to cultivate the seed God planted. I am trying to groom her for the destiny I see in her, but everything, including my child, is fighting against it. Herein lies my struggle.

John Connor hated his mother. But eventually he understood her methods and her mania and her training saved him and saved the world.  At least in fiction anyway.

Halfway There

It's been a while since I posted anything here.  But I needed to take a moment and celebrate a milestone.  I've been working on my book for a few years now.  Last night I reached a milestone.  I've made it to the halfway point in the completion of my first book.

I learned that this is a marathon not a sprint.  I know because I tried sprinting and I never found a finish line.  I tried to force it, finagle it, flim flam it and rush it.  Nothing doing.  The magic won't be rushed.  The magic won't be bullied.  I've found that magic happens when you show up, when you bring your brain to the party and give it over to the dilemma.  The magic is hidden in the puzzle.  The magic is at the center of the labyrinth.  You will make wrong turns.  You will double back. You will get lost, then found, then lost again on this journey.  Whatever you do, don't stop.  Please.  Don't. Stop.

My Favorite Number!

Plastic Nameplates

Hiya folks!  So I'd like to get this free gift and get something for Lindsay, so I posted this link on my blog for FREE STUFF!

Free is my favorite number!